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Deidara squinted.
Then tilted his head.
The trees seemed wrong. And everything around felt off, but he tried dispelling the genjutsu multiple times by now, and nothing happened.
The air had a slight scent of sulfur in it, and Deidara chewed some clay in his left hand, casually strolling about the night’s air between the strange trees.
It’s not that they weren’t proper trees – they had bark, and branches, and leaves – and roots, probably. But Deidara spent quite a while in forests by now, and seen quite a few of them between the different Elemental Nations – and he couldn’t recall ever seeing such trees before.
He tried sensing for anyone around – not that he was much good at it – but it was a dud.
“Guess you’d have to do, yeah?” He told the freshly spat-out clay bird in his hand, watching it perk up before sending it to fly and scope the area. From his right hand, he spat out a few dozen spiders to weave their way around. He couldn’t remember how he had gotten here, after all – setting the stage for some future artistic endeavors couldn’t hurt! Nor would it if Sasori-san decided to pop up. He did hate these smaller spiders getting into his puppets’ gears.
Deidara hummed thoughtfully, making his way through the forest, dry leaves crunching under his sandals.
Then, suddenly, he felt it – a sharp spike of chakra, coming from the north-west.
Only, Deidara never quite felt a chakra like it – it felt gooey and slimy, like when he accidentally licked something he really shouldn’t have – like a poisonous toad trying to crawl up into his arms, or a slippery fish that rotted alive.
“Huh,” Deidara muttered to himself, and chewed on some more clay. “Ain’t got nothing better to do, yeah?”
He comes across a rather odd scene – but this was an odd place, and Deidara is an Akatsuki member – had been for a couple of years by now – so nothing really phases him, much.
The source of the slimy chakra has quite the Bloodline Limit – perhaps even distantly related to Deidara’s own lineage. The man’s long torso is spilling out of an unevenly crafted white vase, plainly decorated with some leaves and plain branches with a spot of small red flowers.
The composition is rather off.
He had white pasty skin – much like Orochimaru-san’s – and was completely hairless, and naked, as well. He had two mouths instead of eyes, and an eye instead of a mouth – and another eye bulging out of his forehead. His lips were green, too.
Really, this guy made Kisame-san’s own bloodline heritage not look too bad by comparison – he had too many arms popping out from his face, some as small as a child’s, or even a baby’s – and that weird exposed purple muscle tissue on top of his head reminded Deidara of Kakazu-san’s sharp tendrils that wove through his skin and kept his limbs in place.
Deidara, sitting on a nearby branch, watches as the man looms before three civilians – two children, and an injured adult, two of which are wearing odd masks on their faces. All of them are bleeding, but none of the injuries seems life-threatening.
The Bloodline Limit user does seem life-threatening, though.
He observes. Deidara doesn’t care much – killing is killing, children or no children – he’s not about to take someone’s contract from under them – but he can’t say he particularly enjoys spending company with guys who take pleasure in killing – like Hidan-san, who was only alive because Kazuku-san couldn’t actually kill him dead (and not for a lack of trying).
Those kind of guys never had an artistic bone in their bodies.
“Hyo, hyo!” The man chuckles, in a rather grating, high-pitched voice. “A pleasure to meet you! My name is Gyokko. Before I kill you, might I ask for a minute of your time?”
Deidara spits off some more spiders, and some ants, too, as the civilians squabble together.
“I'd be delighted to show my artwork to my three guests tonight!”
Deidara perks up, noting a second brown vase between Gyokko and the civilians.
Perhaps he judged the man too harshly – a fellow artist? With that kind of chakra and means – what was his craft? Deidara feels the blood rush in his veins – excited. The vase must be an indication, that the man sculpts, too – perhaps the asymmetry was even a deliberate choice. And vases – vases could make for wonderful art, from the right clay, and in the right place and time –
The civilians murmur between themselves, but the man – Gyokko – seems too excited to heed them.
“Now then, let me start with this piece!” Gyokko exclaims, clapping four of his small childlike hands in delight, and the slimy chakra spikes and slithers against Deidara’s skin like a slippery eel rubbing grains of sand between them.
It corresponds with a black bubbling mass amassing from the brown vase, building and building – before revealing –
“Behold, ‘Death Throes of the Smiths’!” Gyokko proclaims, and Deidara feels himself grimacing as the man carries on blabbering, gritting his own teeth.
He goes on and on and on, and Deidara can feel his own temper rising, for that pointless pompousness in what is essentially a rebranded pile of bodies with some swords sticking into them.
And he couldn’t even be bothered to finish them off! They were still moaning and crying – Deidara clenches his teeth.
He would not let that stand.
“That thing is not art, yeah?” Deidara says, sure-footed as he’s standing by the piece, gesturing at the construct of the dying civilians. “That’s shoddy craftsmanship, yeah? Even if it’s temporary, that’s not true art.”
“Eh?!” Gyokko yawped,“ Where did you come from? And who are you to question my art?!”
“True art,” Deidara explains, narrowing his eyes at Gyokko, “is an explosion.”
When it was all said and done, the sun shone on the scorched earth, still smoldering with the remains of dozens of singular fiery works of art.
The strange trees were gone, as well as some of the mountains.
And that asymmetrical vase, too.
Deidara looked around himself, pleased.
Such was true art.
It left an impact.